Archive for the 'Humour' Category

“It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humour, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.”- Edward de Bono

The last presentation at KM Australia last night was from Gene Smith. This was one of my favourite types of presentation – wide-ranging, interesting, mind-expanding and minimal text on the slides.

The main topic was the future of information architecture. Among other things, Gene talked about the following:

Twitter search – compared to Google, this adds the power of mining conversations, as well as content.

Just heard an interesting interview on the radio. The subject was Joe Bennett, who has recently published a book called: Where Underpants Come From. You can read more about the book in an article in New Zealand’s Dominion Post.

Apparently, Bennett looked at the “Made in China” tag in his new undergarments one day, and decided to find out more. This led him on a rather strange journey to China, and into Chinese history.

The thing that caught my attention was a story he told of one incident during the journey.

As I remember the story, he was eating in a small restaurant in a lane-way in a Chinese city. He was the only tourist in the restaurant, among 30 or 40 Chinese customers. The others in the restaurant fairly quickly noticed his entire lack of ability to eat with chopsticks. He was “spreading food all over the restaurant, and not eating anything”. Everyone was very good-natured about it, and some began to laugh at his predicament. He laughed with them. One came over and gave him instructions on eating with chopsticks.

By the end of the meal, even though he spoke almost no Chinese, and the other diners little English, they were all laughing and joking together. When he left the restaurant, everyone said goodbye to him. The waitress even followed him out onto the street to return his tip.

Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations yesterday was profound, and very moving. I think it was also notable that the centrepiece of it was a story. Just one story, of a single person’s experiences. Yet this was a powerful way of making the speech something more than platitudes. It showed a willingness to listen, and to attempt to understand, the experiences inflicted upon our indigenous people by authorities until as recently as the early 1970s.

The speech was attended by all but one of the five living former Australian Prime Ministers.

———————-

The Games was a satirical program shown on ABC TV in Australia in two series in 1998 and 2000. It was written by John Clarke, Ross Stevenson and others. Episode 3 of Series 2 (3 July 2000) was significant in that it included the following “Apology from John Howard”.

While the program was satirical, this particular speech was in its own way moving, and almost as profound. It was read by the Australian actor John Howard, and can currently be seen on YouTube here. A full copy of the episode script is here.

Since I attended this session, Troy Swindells-Grose of Humour Australia left some interesting comments on my earlier post.

It was a great session. Like a lot of these things, it strongly reinforced a lot of what I already knew, and added in some new ideas as well. I was reminded of one of my favourite quotes:

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

Of course, there is another great Gandhi quote:

Reporter: “Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilisation?”Mahatma Gandhi: “I think it would be a good idea.”

I was interested to hear about the existence of “laughter clubs” – groups of people that just get together and laugh! A great way to release endorphins. During the session, Troy referred instead to “dolphins”, and how when you laugh they swim around and tickle the pleasure centres of your brain…